reign

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See also: Reign and rein

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English regnen, from Old French reignier, from the Latin verb rēgnō, and the noun rēgnum. Doublet of regnum.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

reign (plural reigns)

  1. The exercise of sovereign power.
    England prospered under Elizabeth I's reign.
    • 2020 December 6, Xin Yan, “The Seemingly Impossible Is Possible”, in Minghui‎[1]:
      Throughout history, no single dictator has successfully upheld their reign forever, no matter how powerful they seemed to be.
  2. The period during which a monarch rules.
    The reign of Victoria was a long one.
  3. The territory or sphere over which a kingdom; empire; realm; dominion, etc. is ruled.

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb[edit]

reign (third-person singular simple present reigns, present participle reigning, simple past and past participle reigned)

  1. (intransitive) To exercise sovereign power, to rule as a monarch.
    He reigned in an autocratic manner.
  2. (transitive, rare, nonstandard) To reign over (a country)
    • 2007, Anna Chilewska, Writing after the gaze: the rupture of the historical‎[2]:
      The House of Piast reigned Poland from its foundation to 1385.
  3. To be the winner of the most recent iteration of a competition.
  4. To be a dominant quality of a place or situation; to prevail, predominate, rule.
    Silence reigned.
    • 1936, F.J. Thwaites, The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards Publishing, published 1940, page 58:
      Silence reigned, broken only by the hideous screeching of vultures and the sound of a lawn-mower being used in the hospital grounds.
    • 2007, Richard Bawden, “Redesigning Animal Agriculture: a Systemic Perspective”, in David L. Swain, Ed Charmley, John Steel, Shaun Coffey, editors, Redesigning Animal Agriculture: The Challenge of the 21st Century‎[3], CABI, page 1:
      Unfortunately – and ironically – the word ‘system’ itself is used in such a wide variety of contexts within animal science, as indeed it is in virtually every domain of human activity, that confusion reigns about what a systems-oriented research programme actually looks like and what systems-oriented animal scientists actually do.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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